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Spinnaker Software
Spinnaker Software was a software company founded in 1982John Case. ''Digital Future'', William Morrow : New York, N.Y. 1985. p. 122. known primarily for its line of non-curriculum based educational software, which was a major seller during the 1980s. It was founded by chairman Bill Bowman and president C. David Seuss. Spinnaker pioneered the educational software market and was the first company to mass market low cost, educational software. It went public on NASDAQ in 1991 and was acquired by The Learning Company in 1994. The Learning Company was subsequently acquired by Mattel. Educational and entertainment titles One of the key elements of the business plan was to change the marketing of software aimed at home users: Instead of plastic bags, the software was put into brightly colored, durable plastic boxes. To reach non-tech-savvy parents as potential buyers, full-color advertisements were run in magazines like ''Good Housekeeping'', '' Better Homes and Gardens'' and ''News ...
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Snooper Troops
''Snooper Troops'' is a series of two 1982 adventure/educational video games developed by Spinnaker Software and published by Computer Learning Connection. They were released for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64 and DOS. The first case was entitled ''Snooper Troops: Case #1: The Granite Point Ghost'' and the second case entitled ''Snooper Troops: Case #2 - The Case of the Disappearing Dolphin'' was released later that year. Plot In the first case, players have to solve the mystery of "The Granite Point Ghost", which has been scaring the Kim family out of their house. Gameplay In this "mystery simulation", players use the SnoopNet computer to search for clues along the streets, and search in people's houses while they're not at home. If you are caught snooping too many times, the game is over. After gaining enough information, they can convict the criminal. ''InfoWorld'' described the game as an electronic version of the board game Clue. Development ''Snooper Troops'' ...
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The Learning Company
The Learning Company (TLC) was an educational software company founded in 1980 in Palo Alto, California and headquartered in Fremont, California. The company produced a grade-based line of learning software, edutainment games, and productivity tools. Its titles included the flagship series ''Reader Rabbit'', for preschoolers through second graders, and ''The ClueFinders'', for more advanced students. The company was also known for publishing licensed educational titles featuring characters such as Arthur Read, Arthur, Scooby-Doo (character), Scooby-Doo, Zoboomafoo, and Caillou. In 1995, the company was acquired by The Learning Company (formerly SoftKey), SoftKey in a hostile takeover bid, at which point SoftKey assumed the Learning Company name and brand. History The Learning Company was founded in 1980 by Ann McCormick; Leslie Grimm; Teri Perl; and Warren Robinett, a former Atari employee who had programmed the popular game ''Adventure (1979 video game), Adventure''. They s ...
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Windham Classics
Windham Classics Corporation was a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software. The corporation was founded in 1984 and went defunct circa 1985/86 or later. The headquarters were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Adventure games Windham Classics published five adventure games. The games belonged to the genres of interactive fiction with graphics and point-and-click adventure game. They were based upon books for children. The game development was a part of Spinnakers marketing strategy in the adventure game market in the 1980s: Target groups of Windham Classic adventures were children players and target groups of Telarium, another Spinnaker subsidiary corporation, were grown-up players. * '' Below the Root'', 1984 (developed in corporation with Zilpha Keatley Snyder, based upon her novel '' Below the Root'') * '' Swiss Family Robinson'', 1984 (based upon the novel ''The Swiss Family Robinson'' by Johann David Wyss) * '' The Wizard of Oz'', 1985 (based upon the novels ''The Wonderful Wiza ...
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Harvard Graphics
Harvard Graphics was a graphics and presentation program for IBM PC compatibles. The first version, titled Harvard Presentation Graphics was released for MS-DOS in 1986 by Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) and achieved a high market share. It was taken off the market in 2017. History Harvard Graphics was one of the first desktop business application software programs that allowed users to incorporate text, information graphics, and charts into custom slideshow presentations. The original version could import data from Lotus 1-2-3 or Lotus Symphony, charts created in Symphony or PFS Graph, and ASCII text. It could export text and graphics to Computer Graphics Metafile and to pfs:Write, also manufactured by SPC. Its use of vector graphics produced mixed results on the CGA and EGA displays common at the time, but output was usually sent to a slide printer or a color plotter. "Presentation" was dropped from the name for the second release, which came in 1987, developed by Mari ...
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Software Publishing Corporation
Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) was a Mountain View, California, Mountain View, California-based manufacturer of business software, originally well known for its "pfs:" series (and its subsequent "pfs:First" and "pfs:Professional" derivative series) of business software products, it was ultimately best known for its pioneering Harvard Graphics Graphics#Business, business and presentation program, presentation graphics program. Though SPC's earliest product was for the Apple II series, Apple II personal computer, most of its products were for use on Text-based (computing), text-based DOS desktop computers, with non-graphical user interface, graphical-user-interfaces (GUI), long before the graphical GUIs of Macintosh or Microsoft Windows existed. A salient benefit of Harvard Graphics, then, was that it brought sophisticated on-screen graphics capabilities to computers running the normally non-graphical, text-based DOS operating system. This factor played a role in the company' ...
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Write
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute human languages (with the debatable exception of computer languages); they are a means of rendering language into a form that can be reconstructed by other humans separated by time and/or space. While not all languages use a writing system, those that do can complement and extend capacities of spoken language by creating durable forms of language that can be transmitted across space (e.g. written correspondence) and stored over time (e.g. libraries or other public records). It has also been observed that the activity of writing itself can have knowledge-transforming effects, since it allows humans to externalize their thinking in forms that are easier to reflect on, elaborate, reconsider, and revise. A system of writing relies on many of t ...
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Springboard Software
Springboard Software, inc. was a software company founded in 1982 known primarily for its line of non-curriculum based educational software. It was bought by Spinnaker Software in 1990. Titles * Early Games, Early Games for Young Children (1982: Atari 8-bit, 1983: Apple II, Commodore 64, TRS-80, CoCo, 1984: MS-DOS, 1986: Macintosh) * Fraction Factory (1984: Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS) * Easy as ABC (1984: Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Macintosh) * Quizagon (1984: Commodore 64) * Stickers (software), Stickers (Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS) * Puzzle Master (software), Puzzle Master (Apple II) * Rainbow Painter (Apple II, Commodore 64) * Mask Parade (Apple II, MS-DOS) * Piece of Cake Math (1983: Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, MS-DOS) * Graphics Expander vol. 1 (Apple II, Commodore 64, MS-DOS) * Certificate maker (1986) ** Certificate Library vol. 1 ** Certificate Expander vol. 1 * The Newsroom (software), The Newsroom (1984: Apple II, MS-DOS, 1985: Commodore 64, 1987: ...
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Productivity Software
Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings, electronic music and digital video). Its names arose from it increasing productivity, especially of individual office workers, from typists to knowledge workers, although its scope is now wider than that. Office suites, which brought word processing, spreadsheet, and relational database programs to the desktop in the 1980s, are the core example of productivity software. They revolutionized the office with the magnitude of the productivity increase they brought as compared with the pre-1980s office environments of typewriters, paper filing, and handwritten lists and ledgers. In the United States, some 78% of "middle-skill" occupations (those that call for more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor's degree) now require the us ...
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Billboard (magazine)
''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs, and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox, phonograph, and radio became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off ...
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Arthur C
Arthur is a common male given name of Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. Another theory, more widely believed, is that the name is derived from the Roman clan '' Artorius'' who lived in Roman Britain for centuries. A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Italian it is Arturo. Etymology The earliest datable attestation of the name Arthur is in the early 9th century Welsh-Latin text ''Historia Brittonum'', where it refers to a circa 5th to 6th-century Briton general who fought against the invading Saxons, and who later gave rise to the famous King Arthur of medieval legend and literature. A possible earlier mention of the same man is to be found in the epic Welsh poem ''Y Gododdin'' by Aneirin, which some scholars assign to the late 6th century, though this is still a ...
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Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction. Bradbury wrote many works and is widely known by the general public for his novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953) and his short-story collections ''The Martian Chronicles'' (1950) and ''The Illustrated Man'' (1951). Most of his best known work is speculative fiction, but he also worked in other genres, such as the coming of age novel ''Dandelion Wine'' (1957) and the fictionalized memoir ''Green Shadows, White Whale'' (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including ''Moby Dick'' and ''It Came from Outer Space''. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. ''The New York Times'' called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern ...
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Byron Preiss
Byron Preiss (April 11, 1953 – July 9, 2005)Byron Preiss
at the via Genealogybank.com. Retrieved on May 20, 2014
Archived
from the original on May 20, 2014.
was an American writer, editor, and publisher. He founded and served as president of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, and later of ibooks Inc.


Biography


Early life and career

A native of